The Catholic Lawyer Volume 3 Number 1 Volume 3, January 1957, Number 1 Article 7 Edmund Plowden, Master Treasurer of the Middle Temple Richard O'Sullivan Follow this and additional works at: https://scholarship.law.stjohns.edu/tcl Part of the Catholic Studies Commons This Article is brought to you for free and open access by the Journals at St. John's Law Scholarship Repository. It has been accepted for inclusion in The Catholic Lawyer by an authorized editor of St. John's Law Scholarship Repository. For more information, please contact [email protected]. EDMUND PLOWDEN' MASTER TREASURER OF THE MIDDLE TEMPLE (1561-1570) RICHARD O'SULLIVAN D ENUO SURREXIT DOMUS: the Latin inscription high on the outside wall of this stately building announces and records the fact that in the year 1949, under the hand of our Royal Treasurer, Elizabeth the Queen, the Hall of the Middle Temple rose again and became once more the centre of our professional life and aspiration. To those who early in the war had seen the destruction of these walls and the shattering of the screen and the disappearance of the Minstrels' Gallery; and to those who saw the timbers of the roof ablaze upon a certain -midnight in March 1944, the restoration of Domus must seem something of a miracle. All these things naturally link our thought with the work and the memory of Edmund Plowden who, in the reign of an earlier Queen Elizabeth, devoted his years as Treasurer and as Master of the House to the building of this noble Hall. Though his biography has never been written, his name has always been held in benediction among us. In Plowden Building is located the Treasury, from which the Inn is ruled; in the Hall corridor is a lamp of-remembrance bearing his arms; his bust is always before us here; and the main window that looks out upon the garden and the river beyond is crowned again by the arms of Plowden, on which an augmentation of two fleurs-de-lis carries memories of the Crusade, and the achievement of an ancestor at the siege of Acre which won the gratitude and the good will of Richard Coeur-de-Lion. The Plowdens are an old Shropshire family with origins as early as the Saxon time. Edmund Plowden was born in 1518 and, always a firm adherent of the ancient faith, was destined to live through the political and religious -revolutions of the reigns of Henry VIII, Edward VI, Mary and Elizabeth. He married Katherine, daughter of William Sheldon of Beoley in Worcestershire, and was the father of three :A reading given in the presence of Her Majesty the Queen Mother at the Middle Temple Hall, November 12, 1952. EDMUND PLOWDEN boys and three girls. He rebuilt the Hall at "In the 20th year of my age," says Plow- Plowden at the same time as he was plan- den, "I entered upon the study of the law." ning the Hall of the Middle Temple.' His It was a critical moment in English legal descendants still own and occupy the old history. "In 1535," Maitland tells us, "the Hall and the estate at Plowden;2 and one year in which More was done to death, the of his descendants, Sir Edwin Plowden, is Year Books come to an end: in other words, the Chief Planner of our modern welfare the great stream of Law Reports that has state. been flowing for near two centuries and a Of the early education of Edmund Plow- half, ever since the days of Edward I, be- 3 den we know little. Though he had no comes discontinuous, and then runs dry." degree, both Cambridge and Oxford claim And he cites some words of Burke: "To give him. Since English law was not taught at judgment privately is to put an end to Re- either University before the middle of the ports. And to put an end to Reports is to eighteenth century, it is plain in any event that he learnt his law in London, like Thomas More, whose friend Erasmus said, that in those days it was no small part of nobility (nonnulla nobilitatis pars) to be educated in London: at the Inns of Court, which were "the University and Church Militant of the Common Law." 1 The Hall at Plowden was equipped with several priests' hiding holes, which are still to be seen, and which correspond in style and character with the hiding holes at Harvington Hall, another re- cusant centre, in Worcestershire. Mass is said to-day at Plowden Hall in a chapel dedicated to St. Francis of Assisi. 2 Edmund (afterwards Sir Edmund) Plowden, a grandson of the great lawyer, links the history of the family with the history of the United States. About 1620, it seems, he sailed to America with a numerous company of emigrants and established the plantation of New Albion, "a habitable and fruitful island named Isle Plowden, otherwise Long Isle, about six leagues from the main, near Portrait of Edmund Plowden (1518-1585) de la Warre Bay, and forty leagues square of the adjoining continent of Virginia, as in the nature of the Middle Temple. of a county palatine." By Charter dated July 1634, By courtesy of Mr. William Plowden of Plowden King Charles I granted and confirmed the island Hall, Shropshire, England. and lands to Sir Edmund Plowden, his heirs and assigns for ever, "with free and full power gra- 3 "The exact significance of this ominous event," ciously to confer favours and honors upon the says Maitland, "has never yet been duly explored well-deserving citizens and inhabitants within the but ominous it surely is." In a footnote he adds: province.., and to cut and stamp different pieces "The cessation of the Year Books in 1535 at the of gold such as shall be lawful, current and ac- moment when the Henrician Terror is at its ceptable to all the inhabitants." See RECORDS OF height is dramatically appropriate." Maitland, I THE PLOWDEN FAMILY, pp. 40-46; PLANTAGENET, English Law and the Renaissance, ANGLO- A DESCRIPTION OF NEW ALBION (1648). AMERICAN LEGAL ESSAYS 192 (1907). 3 CATHOLIC LAWYER, JANUARY, 1957 put an end to the law of England." At this The venerable Masters of the Bench critical moment the Shropshire lad, who endeavoured to maintain a firm discipline: was to be the author of the first and the How could communities, most perfect series of Reports that mark Degrees in schools, and brotherhoods the modem time, entered upon the study in cities.... of the law. He entered, one may imagine, But by degree, stand in authentic place? at one of the Inns of Chancery where new And so rules were made from time to students read their preliminary lessons in time; gentlemen must not wear in their ethics and politics, and learnt the outlines doublets or hose any light colour except of the classical and Christian jurisprudence scarlet or crimson; or wear any upper that gave life and energy to the Common velvet cap or any scarf; or wings in their Law. gowns, white jerkins, buskins or velvet In the Tudor period there were during shoes; double cuffs on their shirts, feathers term time at least one thousand students or ribbons on their caps under penalty of at the ten Inns of Chancery, and some 3s. 4d. for a first offence; and expulsion eight hundred to a thousand students at without redemption for the second. No the four Inns of Court. These students gentleman being in Commons is to wear a crowded into London from all parts of the beard of more than three weeks' growth, realm. They were for the most part sons and under penalty of 40s., to be doubled every heirs of Justices of the Peace, who were week after monition. Gentlemen shall not the groundwork and frame of Tudor ad- wear their study gowns further in the City ministration. Sons follow their fathers; than Fleet Bridge and Holbom Bridge, or brothers are in residence together; county further westward than the Savoy. Also, neighbours go bond for one another. when in Commons they may not wear Span- And so in term time and in vacation they ish cloak, sword and buckler, or rapier, or make their exercises in the law, in moot- hats; or gowns girded with a dagger in the ing and in disputations, which gave their back. style and character to the science of plead- Though the four Honourable Societies ing. Except on Mooting Nights, at every were first of all schools for lawyers, their Mess, at dinner the rule was for the puisne legal studies did not exclude the liberal arts, to put a short case which the rest were and there was an intense intellectual and bidden "throughoutly to argue, and not to social life. Dancing was part of the ancient depart under penalty of twelve pence." Thus quam apte, quamque explicate singula resumunt, they learned, in Shakespeare's phrase, to quanta cum facilitate et copia, quantaque cum 4 practise rhetoric in their common talk. gratia et venustate, vel confirmant sua, vel re- fellunt aliena! Certe nec dialecticae vim multum 4 In an inaugural lecture at Cambridge Sir Thomas in eis desideres, nec eloquentiae splendorem.' Smith, Professor of Roman Civil Law (who was Maitland, 1 ANGLO-AMERICAN LEGAL ESSAYs 200 a contemporary with Plowden as Master of the (1907). For the special interest of Shakespeare Bench at the Middle Temple), exclaimed upon the in the Middle Temple, and of the Middle Temple skill in disputation shown by the students of in him, see Hotson, Love's Labour's Won, SHAKE- English law at the Inns of Court.